counterglow
by ncfan
Summary: The aesthetics of eternity.


My first foray into _Puella Magi. _Oh boy. Well, to anyone who has read my works before, you know the drill: read and enjoy, and if you want to comment, _please_ do. I'm accepting of everything short of flames.

Also, let's assume that Homura has never heard of "meganekko."

I own nothing.

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><p>Time bending backwards; well, that's not what Homura does, just what she pretends so that no one will be unduly alarmed (<em>Not that there's anyone to tell<em>). What she does do instead probably violates several laws of nature and certainly breaks more than a few of the sane mind.

No, what she does is run. She runs away from ruined worlds where the screaming comes like the chorus of Hell. Whether it's just a little fire or an inferno, threatening to engulf all the world in flame, instead of staying to fight the darkness, Homura flees. Flees to a different universe where there is still a chance and everything hasn't fallen to pieces, leaving the roaring flames far behind her. She has to keep moving.

"_Such a sweet girl." Kyubey's expressionless face does not fracture as he looks over the small corpse before them. "Pity."_

_Homura barely hears for the sobs rising piteously in her throat._

No one would ever believe what she used to be. They see the cold girl with bones of steel, eyes of ice, heart of stone. They see the frail wisp of a girl who cuts down abominations without pity or hesitation, they see the frowning girl who is brusque and standoffish to all, they see the inhuman creature, making a mockery of what humanity is supposed to be.

Long, pale fingers curled around her gun (_cool metal, ready to kill at her command; this is the only thing that never betrays her)_, Homura supposes she can't really blame them. She can barely believe what she used to be, that timid, quaking girl who tripped over her words and had to leech the strength of others just to have any strength at all. That girl lived a thousand universes ago; she doesn't exist anymore. Homura can't be her anymore. She's forgotten how to be helpless, forgotten how to be cheerful and naïve and everything that comes with that.

There's only one person she really wants to smile for, and no matter how many universes she has to tear the veil down from to find her, Homura will save her this time.

That's what she tells herself every time, and though she eventually screams, unheeded for Madoka to stop, every time, Homura still tells herself that eventually she will succeed.

She has to.

-0-0-0-

Sayaka is the first to turn hostile. Somehow, that doesn't surprise Homura at all.

Even in the first world, when Homura sported a totally different spirit from the one she has now, her relationship with Sayaka was not without its tensions. They competed for Madoka's attentions, both wanting to be the friend nearest to her heart. Their "rivalry", if you can call it that, was in the first world at least good-natured. It quickly ceased to be so in subsequent worlds.

Homura knows what it is with Sayaka, can guess what it is lurking in her mind that motivates her to act the way she does and treat the mysterious time traveler with wary hostility.

Fed on fairytales and wild, tangled dreams for all of her days, Sayaka thinks she's in some sort of manga. She thinks she's one of those magnetic manga heroines, and that with enough brash courage and blind dedication, justice will prevail over the forces of darkness as it always does in those trite little volumes. She thinks that there's no way she can lose.

Perhaps the reason she's so antagonistic against Homura is because she knows better.

This is not a manga, a fairytale, nor anything but cold, leaden reality. Homura doesn't know how many times she has attempted to impress that fact upon Sayaka, to the point that when she frames the words her mouth feels pained and tired. _Why waste the words on someone determined to ignore you? _she wonders, watching a streak of blue vanish into the night. _She never has listened to you before. Why continue to make the effort? _Still, Homura gives the increasingly hollow words, and is unsurprised when she is brushed off again.

_(Sometimes, Homura wonders if her progressively passionless delivery of why Sayaka should not contract with Kyubey is the whole reason Sayaka chooses to go ahead and become a Puella Magi despite Homura's warnings. After all, she can't even bring herself to summon emotion—she's seen all this before, knows how it will inevitably end, and can no longer bear to try to make a strong connection with Sayaka. Homura can no longer bear to try to be someone whom Sayaka will listen to.)_

Knowing the manga-fairytale sort of world Sayaka inhabits, Homura can well guess how she sees her. In the manga and all of the books Sayaka reads, the characters who keep secrets from the hero always turn out to be shady in some regard; at the very least, they certainly tend to have some sort of unsavory leaning. Plenty of people in real life dislike those who would be openly secretive as well, not trusting the masks, the glassy eyes, nor the lips that evade and prevaricate. Sayaka is the sort of girl who would hate secret-keepers. On the other hand, characters who aren't "team players" tend to get negative press in these sorts of scenarios as well; Homura has her reasons for striking out on her own, but she doubts Sayaka would accept them.

At best, Sayaka has deemed Homura to be the sort of selfish anti-heroine often found in magical girl manga and anime. The anti-heroine may have some sort of tragic past that explains her present behavior; she acts as a rival to the heroine who will eventually "come around", either through compassionate efforts on the heroine's part or through repeated poundings on the part of the heroine. After the first few dozen loops, Homura starts to get the distinct impression that Sayaka certainly wouldn't mind being given the opportunity to beat her up. _She can dream. It's never going to happen, but she can dream._

At worst, Sayaka has taken account of Homura's admittedly sketchy behavior and outwards personality and deemed her to somehow be the villain of the story she's fallen into. _I suppose she thinks I could be in league with the Witches, or at least that I'm somehow responsible for their creation. That certainly is the way Miki-san's mind seems to work. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I wouldn't be surprised…_

If she thinks she could get the brash, all-too-idealistic girl to listen, Homura would tell her that it just isn't that simple.

Despite everything, though, Homura wonders if she should add "saving Sayaka" to the agenda. They were friends once, and somewhere, somewhere small, somewhere shriveled, somewhere mostly dead but still clinging to the spark of life, Homura has to admit that Madoka isn't the only person she wanted to save once. Sayaka takes a fall literally every time she contracts with Kyubey, the weight of the curse equal to her wish proving too much, and crushing her beneath. _Too fragile, too broken._

No. Homura must save her strength and fortitude for Madoka; Sayaka refuses to appreciate the effort. Sayaka is blind and deaf, stumbling, refusing to acknowledge her own inadequacies and frailties, and hating anyone who tries to point them out to her. She is not the heroine of this story, only a pawn.

Until she realizes that, there will be no saving Sayaka.

-0-0-0-

With each new world, aspects of the first one that were forsaken grow fainter and fainter.

Homura's parents died when she was a young child. It was supposed to have been some sort of industrial accident. She supposes she must have cried when the nurse who normally took care of her came in and told her what had happened, great, fat tears gushing down her cheeks like the sudden birth of a waterfall. But Homura doesn't remember anymore, and she can't summon the emotion to cry over people that have become distant figments to her.

In the bare, vague, dreary world better known as Homura's dreams, she likes to imagine that her mother was beautiful, and her father, kind. She imagines that they cared about her, loved her dearly, that she was the apple of their eye, and that they didn't want to leave her. These are childish desires that she ought to purge for her own good—they cloud her judgment and shake her resolve like the trembling of the earth. She ought to focus on what she set out to do, what consumes her heart until there is nothing left of it to give to anything else. Still, Homura, thinks, wonders, speculates, but never quite mourns.

There isn't enough left in hollowed-out twilight world of memory for Homura to grieve for her parents. She tries and fails to remember the rhythm of their voices, and for appearance only has her mind clinging to "black" and "gray" for clues. Sometimes, when she is lying awake in bed and wondering when the pendulum will fall _this _time, she wishes she could remember her mother's gentle (_was it even gentle? I don't really know_) touch, or her father's strong (_strong? Were they?_) arms around her. Anything to have a salve against the crushing solitude found in the night shadows and the stark moonlight falling on her face.

Even thinking of Madoka, ethereal and lovely, brings her no solace here.

Homura tells herself that she should forget her past. It's over and done with. She's never going to see her parents again, and even if they were alive, she no longer has the sort of heart that supports such sentimentality. If her parents were alive, they would no longer recognize her for what she has become.

-0-0-0-

Homura never guessed how broken Mami was until she drew her gun against her fellows.

In the first few iterations, Homura adored Mami just as much as every other Puellae Magi under her care. Still operating under her naïve, innocent assumptions, Homura was enough of a child to idealize Mami as everything a Puella Magi was supposed to be: courageous, empathetic, kind, beautiful, confident. There didn't seem to be any situation she couldn't face without fortitude and grace. She just seemed so perfect.

Perhaps that's why watching her fall the first time was so shattering.

"_Tomoe-san!"_

Mami's death in the first world was Homura's first and most important wakeup call, that this _wasn't _all fun and games. What she took away from Mami's death was that this was not a game, that people could easily end up dead when confronted by a Witch, that these battles were real and dangerous. _Do I have the strength for this sort of life? _she wondered that terrible day, tears wetting her fallen friend's bloodstained blouse. _Could I face death like she did, every day of my life?_

The answer was "yes", and Homura supposes she has Mami to thank for making her aware of the gravity of such a choice.

Homura watched Mami die in every universe. There just seemed something so arbitrary about the way the golden-haired girl died every single time, her blood spilling on the ground and body so mangled that it could barely be recognized as hers. Every time she watched her fall, Homura had the sense that she was watching the death of a sacrificial lamb at the bloody altar. There was just something so… _contrived _about it. So, eventually, Homura decided not to wait until Mami was dead.

It was the first universe she had entered after learning the truth of Puellae Magi that Homura had the idea of telling Mami and the others. Oh, certainly, Homura didn't expect Mami to believe her at first—who would?—but in time, whether gently or not, Mami would come to understand, and she would know. Surely Mami, strong, mature Mami, would have some idea of what to do about this. Mami would know what to do.

A couple of hours later, Homura learned how wrong she was, when Mami, sobbing wildly, tears making her dirty hair stick to her cheeks, destroyed Kyouko's Soul Gem, and, after binding Homura so tightly that her lungs could barely expand, prepared to do the same to her. The truth had broken her entirely, making the perfect little porcelain doll, so brittle, shatter into a million pieces set to graze the faces of all around.

Mami is not the perfect "surrogate big sister" that Homura thought her to be. If the weight of the truth, admittedly one set to crush anyone who learned it, could make her snap so quickly afterwards, then the corruption must have already been spreading behind that serene, Madonna-like visage, brought on by some heinous past grief.

Homura doesn't think it's a coincidence that Mami is never quite so fond of her after that world as she used to be.

This is true for every one, but Mami becomes a little warier, a little more distant, a little more suspicious, with each new world taken advantage of. She is more likely to jibe and needle, more likely to give all-too-mild taunts. It's when Homura realizes that, from now on, Mami will see her as an enemy or at least as a threat in every world that she comes to, from now on. They will never be anything resembling friends again.

_You were like the sister I never had, like the mother I lost. For whatever it's worth, I just want you to know that. I'm sorry. Goodbye._

It's funny, but with distance, Homura can see Mami more clearly than she ever could when her eyes were clouded with affection and love. There's something so indefinably broken about her, even with her sweet smiles and her maternal demeanor. And Homura never noticed it before, but there's a touch of the arrogant to that spirit too, of wanting to show off in front of the newbies to the extent of disabling the one person in the area who could have helped her. _Were you always this overconfident, Tomoe-san?_

She's so brash, so foolhardy, so wonderful despite all of this, and so, _so _young. Homura finds that she envies her for that. She envies Mami for her youth, fiercely envies her for still having that ephemeral thing that the dark-haired wraith of this world has long since lost.

After countless worlds and watching Mami die countless times, Homura thinks she finally understands why it must be so.

She stops in front of the mangled corpse, eyes narrowed. Out of the sort of physical reflex that she will never be able to banish, even if her heart is a dead thing, Homura's stomach heaves at the gory sight. However, the aged girl has at least managed to tame her gag reflex, and she forces the burning bile back down her throat.

"You know, I think I understand now." If there were still eyes, closed or open, Homura would look at them when addressing the dead girl. As it is, she looks at the place where Mami's throat empties out into nothingness and spills her blood into a black sea. "Why you always die, I mean."

Glassy purple eyes narrow, betraying no emotion. Homura remembers the old maxim—_Puellae Magi must suffer a curse equal to the wish they made_—and remembers the circumstances of Mami becoming a Puella Magi.

"You wished to live, didn't you, Tomoe-san?"

-0-0-0-

All Puellae Magi have dreams of the past worlds, and that means Madoka as well. In the past, Homura has been given signs that Madoka may have some remembrance of past worlds. She wishes she could say that this is the reason she abandoned her glasses and forewent her braids, but the truth is a bit more complicated.

In the hospital, staring out the window as life went by, Homura's long, silken black hair was her only beauty, her only vanity. The nurse who took care of her most often would brush it out and braid it to make it more manageable; knowing how much Homura loved her hair, she never suggested that it be cut.

"_There," she remarks with triumph, eyes shining. "You look very pretty with your braids, Akemi-chan."_

Sometimes, the braids felt too heavy and pulled at her scalp, but Homura only ever thought of undoing them when in the shower or in bed (And in the latter case, not even always). As a Puella Magi, wearing her long hair in braids helped keep it out of the way when she fought, though as Homura once discovered, it made it much easier for Witches and other foes to grab on to her.

"_Why don't you hack it all off?" Kyouko asks, helping Homura to her feet with a quick, rough hand. "You'd probably be better off."_

"_You're one to talk," Homura replies sullenly, wincing at her sore, aching scalp, and nodding pointedly to Kyouko's long scarlet tresses. "Your hair's longer than mine."_

Homura just can't get rid of her hair, or her braids. She was never what anyone could call an "ultra-feminine" girl, didn't get the chance to learn to be graceful except through years of pain. This is her one claim to "femininity" as most of the world seems to see it, and maybe Homura is just too vain, or too frightened, to think of what she might look like if it was short.

On the other hand, Homura used to hate her glasses. They weren't a symptom of her illness, just a symptom of naturally impaired eyesight. The frames and lenses were thick and nearly opaque; Homura knew how much of a dork she looked like wearing them. She had been teased for them as a child, and when she set foot in junior high school for the first time in her life, she was terrified that the bullying would resume.

_Why can't I just wear eye contacts? _Homura had wondered despairingly. _They're much better than glasses, and they don't break like these. Stupid. Things._

Of course, Madoka had something different to say on the subject.

"_Why don't you like them?" Madoka exclaims, her rose-colored eyes widening, startled. "You know glasses look really cute on a girl, right? Especially on you!"_

_Despite all efforts not to, Homura blushes an incandescent shade of red._

Homura never wanted to let go of her braids, nor her glasses, especially not after meeting Madoka. Eventually, though, she had to.

The thing about contracting to become a Puella Magi is that, though the contract has far more downsides than benefits, there is one benefit that Homura can not complain about. In order to combat Witches, the body must be as healthy as possible. As such, when she became what she is today, Homura discovered that she had been completely healed of her heart condition; her miraculous recovery had stunned the doctors and confounded medical science. What Homura had also discovered was that her myopia had been completely cured.

Despite no longer having any need to wear them, Homura kept her glasses. They served as an admittedly superficial protection against projectiles, and Madoka had called them _cute_. She had no urge to be rid of them. At the same time, Homura absolutely did not want to be rid of her braids, despite the fact that they ran somewhat contrary to her image as a time-stopping, gun-toting Puella Magi.

Eventually, though, both will be gone.

Homura loses any learned affection she has for her thick spectacles when they become splattered with Madoka's blood. She discards them afterwards, and never thinks about wearing them again. She will not pretend to have impaired vision just to protect her eyes, and she will look at the world around her without a layer of glass getting in the way.

As for the braids…

Braids are a cute hairstyle for little girls. They symbolize the innocence of youth, but are childish at the same time, bespeaking of immaturity. Braids are "safe", unthreatening.

Homura isn't a little girl anymore—on the contrary, she is so very old—and she shouldn't wear her hair like one. She isn't innocent, and she won't wear her hair in braids. And, perhaps with a streak of arrogance, Homura doesn't want anyone to get the impression that she is remotely unthreatening.

No, there's beauty to be found in loose hair, the slender maiden silhouetted against the moon, her long locks of raven hair caught on a soft breeze smelling of rain. Mystery there, and sadness too. Now there's just the matter of keeping the mystery that, a mystery.

-0-0-0-

_She's only let out of bed rarely, so that her leg muscles don't atrophy entirely, and even then, Homura isn't allowed outside for nearly as long as she would like. It seems that the very moment that she comes to appreciate the sun and the breeze and banishes the stagnant air of the inside from her lungs, the nurse is telling her that she needs to go back to bed._

"_Mustn't strain your heart, dear."_

_That's what they all say. Homura must not strain her heart. Homura must not overexert herself, nor do anything that would put her life in danger. So they all tell her, with freakishly identical expressions of stern sympathy. She must never leave go outside without permission, must never leave her bed._

_Most who come to the hospital, once they get over the understandable feelings of intimidation, see it as a safe haven, a sanctum. Here, their ailments shall be cured, their cuts bandaged. Homura has a different opinion of the place._

_She likes the people here, the nurses who take care of her and the doctor who occasionally comes to talk. She likes them, she really does. But Homura can not help but see the hospital as her prison, her living tomb. She's caged here, the bird with clipped wings, the flower that wilts for lack of sunlight._

I just want to go outside for a little while longer. I want to play in the snow in winter. I want to feel the rain on my skin. I want to get a sunburn, just to know what it feels like, and then tan like all the other girls. I just want to go outside.

_Homura stares out the window, and sighs heavily. She can hear birds singing, can hear the wind blowing through the grass and the summer-green leaves. It must be a hot day out, for the middle of July, but inside is cool and sterile, and she wouldn't know._

_A small, pale hand is pressed to the windowpane. For a moment, Homura wants nothing more than to smash it in and catch a whiff of the clean air that doesn't smell like antiseptics or death, but there isn't enough strength in her wasted limbs to do so._

_She would do anything to be able to leave, and never come back._

-0-0-0-

Neither friend nor foe, Sakura Kyouko has always inspired mixed feelings in Homura.

Kyouko is never much of a team player, no matter what the circumstances of the world she happens to be in. Homura can sympathize with that, for various reasons, but the fact that Kyouko tends to keep to herself and only show up when there's a fight means that, though Homura has over time gained insight into Kyouko's past and her motivations, she never forged much of an emotional connection with her, not while Homura still had the sort of heart that could connect with others.

When Homura watches Kyouko fall, there is the strumming of anguish that, as with the others (sans Madoka, of course), is never quite strong enough anymore to bring emotions to her face. It's notable that in most of the worlds in which Kyouko dies, she either dies in battle with Oktavia van Seckendorff, or at least dies due to something relating to Sayaka; the girl's status as a doom magnet seems to have rubbed off.

Out of all of the Puellae Magi, Kyouko is probably the only one Homura would want fighting with her to defeat Walpurgisnacht. She's the most ruthless, the most likely to strike to kill while the enemy is unaware of her presence. Even if Kyouko always dies if she survives long enough for Walpurgisnacht to arrive in the city, she's the one Homura's most likely to recruit.

That doesn't mean everything's hunky-dory, a-okay between them. When her foe is something other than a Witch, Kyouko has a decidedly unwholesome tendency of getting people who otherwise would not be involved in her conflict dragged into the fray. Since in this case "people" usually means Madoka, Homura can't help but take umbrage. As a result, she likes to minimize her contact with the red-haired girl as much as possible.

Sometimes, though, sometimes, when she looks down at callused hands and the gun held in them, sometimes when Sayaka's defamatory shouts ring in her ears, she'd like to ask Kyouko how she does it. How does Kyouko live through so much and yet stay so normal?

To most, Sakura Kyouko isn't what anyone would term a paragon of normality. She's bloodthirsty and crass, always picking fights even when she knows her adversary would have no chance. Thanks to her impoverished upbringing, Kyouko stockpiles hoarded food like she's expecting 2012's version of Y2K, and if someone wastes food in her presence they'll be lucky just to survive the experience. However, she has lived through the curse equal to her wish, and though not unscarred, Kyouko can still function as a human being without sending out a hundred red flags of abnormality.

(_Homura will never be so normal._)

-0-0-0-

Eyes cold and lips smashed so tightly together that they nearly disappear into her mouth, Homura watches the new Incubator step up to replace the one now riddled with holes on the floor. _I knew it was too good to last. It _never _lasts._

As Kyubey chews pensively on its predecessor's eyeball, it looks up to gaze on Homura. Beady eyes are glassy and impenetrable as ever, betraying nothing beyond a calculated question. When it swallows, it asks, with curiosity but no true concern, "Akemi Homura, are you going to shoot me _every_ time you see me?"

Homura's only answer is to raise her gun again.

-0-0-0-

Somewhere there is a lone angel standing against the agents of destruction. Ethereal and breathtakingly lovely against the ruined landscape, she shines like the light of the brightest star in the devouring darkness all around. Homura looks, and is dazzled every time.

With each passing world, Madoka becomes less that. With each new world Homura sets foot in, Madoka is less the warriors, less the beacon of light in a sea of black. Every time Homura sees her, she's another inch closer to being just a normal girl, the sort of girl who actually needs to be protected by Homura (_This was her wish after all, in a way_). The reversal is nearly complete.

It's not like Homura will ever truly be able to perceive that this is a different Madoka from the one she knew, though.

Madoka was Homura's first friend, the only true friend she has ever had. For the longest time, she was the only person Homura was capable of being truly open with, until she realized that she must close her heart to _this _person as well, if she ever wants to succeed. Homura knows that she can have faith in Madoka, even when everyone else becomes her foe, but still…

It hurts her in ways almost nothing else can when people who were once her comrades treat her as untrustworthy or even as a threat (_I'm here to help! Stop looking at me like that! Stop acting like I'm going to shoot you when your back is turned!_), but none can drive a stake into her heart as Madoka does when her eyes are glazed with wariness. With each world, Madoka becomes more dependent on Homura, but at the same time, Madoka grows less trusting of Homura with each progressive world. Homura's cryptic words now inspire apprehension, and Madoka looks at her with unease, or even fear.

_Please don't look at me like that. Tell me that you trust me, that you don't think I'm lying to you. Please don't be afraid of me. Of all the things I wanted you to be afraid of, I never wanted for you to be afraid of me._

Homura's wish was to save Madoka, to be able to protect her instead of being the weakling whom everyone had to protect. She supposes, then, that it must be her curse to watch Madoka fall every time, to fail to protect her from Kyubey and from herself, and to know that she couldn't save her. Nonetheless, Homura _will_ save Madoka, will break this endless curse, will defeat Walpurgisnacht and break the cycle of doomed young women, so that Madoka doesn't have to contract with Kyubey. She has to.

For Madoka, Homura has destroyed her heart and rendered herself a near-spiritless shell of a human being. Even if Madoka never trusts her again, even if she never calls her 'friend' again, Homura will save her. She will see Madoka live a long life free of the curse of Puellae Magi. Homura will see to it that Madoka never contracts with Kyubey.

She knows all too well the price of failure.

_Walpurgisnacht is dead and gone, and something far more terrible has taken her place._

_Buildings crumble all around, the rubble making the roads impassable, a violent wind whipping Homura's hair mercilessly. She puts a hand up over her mouth to keep from tasting dust, and for one moment wishes beyond all else that she had kept her glasses, so she could keep the dust out of her eyes._

_She who was once a light to the world has now become darkness, a living shadow. Taller than even the highest skyscrapers, Homura watches as the… the _thing _Madoka has become grows larger with each passing second. If she squints, she can see two arms outstretched towards the heavens like a supplicant giving prayer._

Or a God in the act of creation. _Homura knows she can't stay, but she lingers for one moment longer, incapable of tearing her eyes from the form that used to belong to Kaname Madoka._

_So this is Kriemhild Gretchen._

"_Goodbye, Madoka," she mutters, preparing to make the jump. "It seems that I can only offer my sincerest apology for failing you once again, and pray that somewhere, you can still hear me."_

There are days, many days in fact, when Homura fears that eventually her despair will grow to be too much, and that she will turn into a Witch. Her Soul Gem can only remain uncorrupted for so long, and the ruins she leaves behind her dog her every step. The shadows grow longer with each world, her grief at watching Madoka die again and again grows heavier, and Homura starts to question herself.

Maybe this is fate, and Homura is just trying to catch smoke in her hands. Maybe Madoka will always die, or always contract with Kyubey and become Kriemhild Gretchen. Maybe Homura is just one lone soul trying to defy something so undeniable as the passage of the sun or the ocean tides. Maybe she isn't strong enough, even with her wish to protect Madoka. Maybe she just isn't strong enough, and her struggles are pointless, and sometimes, she's just so _tired _that—

_No. I won't do that. There's still too much left to do. I can't become a Witch._

Nevertheless, Homura will fight, even if this all seems so pointless, like a contrived little play where the actors speak the lines with no spirit. She will continue to fight to save Madoka, even if there is no more room for joy in her heart and even the sight of that dear face can't make her smile anymore.

Fighting for Kaname Madoka is the only thing that keeps Homura's hollow heart beating. It's the only thing that matters anymore.


End file.
